Now that you know a bit more about the Captivate interface, take a look at the sample applications you will build during the course of this book. These applications have been designed to showcase almost every single feature of Captivate. Use them as a reference if there is something unclear during one of the exercises.
The first application that you will explore is a typical Captivate project. It uses the screen capture engine of Captivate to create a screenshots-based movie:
Navigate to File | Open to open the
encoderDemo_800.cptxfile in thefinalfolder, situated in the exercise folder you downloaded from the Web.The file opens as a separate tab in the Captivate interface.
In the main options toolbar, right next to the slide navigator, click on the Preview icon.
In the drop-down list, choose the Project item to preview the entire project.
Take a closer look at the Preview icon (see the preceding screenshot). It will be one of the icons you'll use the most during the course of this book. It has six options to control which part of the project you want to preview and how you want to preview it. Note that each of these options is associated with a keyboard shortcut that depends on the system you work on (Mac or Windows).
Let's look at the Preview icons in detail:
Play Slide: This option plays the current slide in the Captivate interface. It is the only preview option that does not open a floating preview pane. Consequently, this preview option is not able to render all the features of Captivate. Previewing a single slide is a good option to quickly test the timings of the objects.
Project: When choosing this option, Captivate generates a temporary flash file and plays the entire project in the Preview pane.
From this Slide: Captivate opens the Preview pane and plays the project from the currently selected slide to the end. This option generates a temporary Flash file, so every single feature of Captivate is supported in this preview mode.
Next 5 Slides: Captivate opens the Preview pane to play a temporary flash file containing five slides, starting from the currently selected slide. It is a great option to quickly test a specific sequence of the project.
In Web Browser: Captivate generates a temporary flash file as well as a temporary HTML file. It then plays the entire project in the default browser. Using this preview option, you will the project in a context very close to the one that will be used by your learners.
HTML5 Output in Web Browser: When using this option, the project is published in HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, and images. It is then played in the default web browser. Note that some features and objects of Captivate are not supported in the HTML5 output. If you plan on publishing your project in HTML5, make sure you use this preview option to ensure that the features, animations, and objects you used in your project are supported in HTML5.
Tip
Floating and Modal panels
In Captivate, a panel can be floating or docked. When a panel floats, the tools and switches situated on other panels are still active. But when the Preview panel is open, only the buttons of that panel are active, while the tools of the other panels are not active anymore. The Preview pane is said to be a Modal floating panel because it disables every tool situated on other panels. Also, note that the Preview panel cannot be docked.
In this case, you clicked on the Preview project option. Captivate generates a temporary flash file and opens it in the floating Preview pane. Follow the on-screen instructions to go through the project. This puts you in the same situation as a learner viewing the eLearning course for the first time.
This project begins with a short welcome video followed by a pretest of three questions. The pretest is made to check if the student really needs to take this particular training. Students that fail the pretest must take the course, while those who pass can skip the course if they want to. To fully understand this feature, it is necessary to take the course twice. Try to answer the questions of the pretest correctly the first time and incorrectly the second time to see how you experience the project in both situations.
The second part of this first sample application (after the pretest) is known as a demonstration. As the name suggests, a demonstration is used to demonstrate something to the learner. Consequently, the learner is passive and simply watches whatever is going on in the Captivate movie. In a demonstration, the mouse object is shown. It moves and clicks automatically.
This particular demonstration features some of the most popular Captivate tools such as Text Captions and Highlight Boxes. You have experienced sound in the Captivate demonstration as well as in the close-captioned sound-enabled slides.
You will now open another sample application. Actually, it is not a real "other" application, but another version of the Encoder demonstration you experienced in the previous topic:
Navigate to File | Open to open the
encoderSim_800.cptxfile in thefinalfolder, situated in your exercise folder.Once the file is open, click on the Preview icon in the main toolbar and choose to preview the entire project.
The Preview pane opens and the Encoder simulation starts to play.
Note
Slide 4 contains a YouTube video. This video will not work in the default Preview pane of Captivate. If you want to see this slide playing correctly, you must ensure that the following two conditions are met. First, you need to be connected to the Internet. Second, navigate to Preview | In Web Browser instead of Preview | Project.
When the animation reaches slide 5, the playhead stops moving and waits for you to interact with the movie. This is the main difference between a demonstration and a simulation.
In Captivate, a simulation is a project in which the learner is active. In a simulation, the mouse object is hidden as learners will use their own mouse to click around the screen in order to progress toward the end of the movie. The very fact that the students are active implies a whole new level of complexity as the learners can perform either the right or the wrong action. In each case, the application must react accordingly. This concept is known as branching, that is, each student experiences the application based on his/her actions.
Follow the on-screen instructions and try to perform the right actions. The application has been set up to give you two chances to perform each action correctly.
When you are through, close the Preview pane.
In order to experience the branching concept hands on, preview the entire movie again, but this time, give yourself a break and perform the wrong actions at each and every step of the simulation (don't worry, it is not graded!). You will see that the application reacts differently and shows you things that were not shown when the right actions were performed! That's branching in action!
This particular simulation features pretty much the same Captivate objects as the demonstration you experienced earlier, only the mouse had to be replaced by interactive objects. Three of those interactive objects have the ability to stop the playhead and wait for the learner to interact with the movie. All these interactive objects can implement the branching concept. Using these interactive objects will be covered in Chapter 5, Adding Interactivity to the Project.
Both the Encoder demonstration and simulation are based on screenshots. To create these sample applications, the first two steps of the production process described earlier have been used:
In step one (the capture phase), the actions have been actually performed in the real Adobe Media Encoder; they were recorded by Captivate behind the scenes.
In step two (the post-production phase), the movie has been edited in Captivate. Sound and closed captions were added, video was imported, the title and ending slides were created, the timing was adjusted, and so on. We even imported a slide created in Microsoft PowerPoint!
Step three (the publishing phase) has not (yet) been performed on these files.
You will now preview the third sample application. Normally, it should already be open in Captivate as a tab in the main area. Click on the drivingInBe.cptx tab to make it the active file.
Tip
If the file is not open, navigate to File | Open to open the drivingInBe.cptx file in the final folder, situated in your exercise folder you downloaded from the Web.
When the file is open and active, use the Preview icon to preview the entire project. Follow the on-screen instructions as a student would. When done, close the Preview pane, then use the Preview icon again to preview the entire project a second time. Answer the question differently from the first time. You will have yet another experience of the branching concept.
Note
Slide 19 of this project will not work as intended if you are not connected to the Internet while viewing the application.
This third sample application is very different from the previous projects you have experienced so far. It is not really a demonstration, nor a simulation. It is none of it and a bit of both at the same time. As you can see, the borderline between a demonstration and a simulation is sometimes very difficult to spot!
When it comes to sound, this movie makes use of the text-to-speech engine of Captivate. Text-to-speech is a great alternative to quickly create the sound clips you need, but the quality of the speech is not as good as when a real human being speaks in front of a good old microphone!
This application is not based on screenshots and does not teach software-related skills. Instead, each slide has been created one by one in Captivate or imported from an existing PowerPoint presentation.
This application is also much more sophisticated than the Encoder applications. Advanced Actions and Variables are used throughout the project to power dynamic features such as the name of the student appearing in a Text Caption. It also features the certificate interaction on the last slide (only if you pass the quiz!) and uses the built-in collection of Characters to spice up the training with a human touch! But the most impressive feature of this particular project is probably the Quiz, one of the biggest and most appreciated tools of Captivate.
The project contains eight Question Slides. Six of these are stored in the Question Pool panel. Each time the project is viewed, one question is asked to the student and a second one is randomly chosen from the question pool. That's why the second time you previewed the application, you did not experience the exact same Quiz as the first time.
The Video Demo mode is a special recording mode of Captivate that is used to produce .mp4 video files. These files can easily be uploaded to online services such as YouTube, Vimeo, or Daily Motion for playback on any device (including iPad, iPhone, and other Internet-enabled mobile devices):
Navigate to File | Open to open the
encoderVideo.cpvcfile in thefinalfolder, situated in your exercise folder.First, note that a Video Demo project does not use the same
.cptxfile extension as a regular Captivate project. It uses the.cpvcfile extension instead. This is the first indication that this project is not going to behave like the other ones you have experienced so far. In addition to a specific file extension, Video Demo projects also have their own Captivate interface as shown in the following screenshot:
In the preceding screenshot, note the absence of the Filmstrip panel. A Video Demo project is not based on slides. Actually, it is a single big video file, so the Filmstrip panel makes no sense in a Video Demo project.
In a video file, interactions are not possible. The file can only be experienced from start to finish in the order defined by the teacher. To use proper words, it is said that a video file proposes a linear experience to the learner while branch-aware interactive projects propose a non-linear experience. Therefore, interactive objects as well as quizzes and branching are not available in a Video Demo project.
Take some time to inspect the rest of the interface. Try to spot the other differences between the regular Captivate interface and the interface used for Video Demos.
When you are ready, click on the Preview icon.
Surprise! Only two options are available in the Preview icon!
In the Preview dropdown, choose the Full Screen option.
Watch the whole movie as if you were viewing it on YouTube!
When the movie is finished, click on the Edit button at the bottom-right corner of the screen to return to the Video Demo editing interface.
Navigate to File | Close All to close every open file. If prompted to save the changes, make sure you do NOT save the changes to these files.
After viewing these four sample applications, you should have a pretty good idea of the tools and general capabilities of Captivate. Before moving on, let's summarize what we have learned from these movies:
Captivate is able to capture the actions you do on your computer and turn them into slides using a sophisticated capture engine based on screenshots.
A Demonstration is a project in which the learner is passive and simply watches the on-screen action.
A Simulation is a project in which the user is active.
PowerPoint slides can be imported into Captivate and converted to Captivate slides.
Sound and video can be imported in Captivate. The application also features a text-to-speech engine and closed captioning.
Question Slides can be created in Captivate. These Question Slides can be stored in Question Pools to create random quizzes.
Other objects that can be included in a Captivate project include Text Captions, Highlight Boxes, and so on.
Captivate contains interactive objects. Three of these interactive objects are able to stop the playhead and wait for the user to interact with the movie.
A Video Demo is not based on screenshots, but is a big video file instead.
Video Demo projects use the
.cpvcfile extension and have a specific user interface.